Nearly three metres tall and over two metres wide, it is composed of fossiliferous limestone, meaning the stone itself contains the traces of ancient marine creatures, visible if you look carefully at the surface. The monument is structured across three tiers: an altar-tomb at the base, relatively plain except for an incised cross on its front panel, then a half-tester canopy forming the centrepiece, and above that an entablature bearing inscribed friezes. Whether a crown or pediment once finished the composition at the top is uncertain; that element, if it ever existed, is gone.

The monument was raised by Margaret Archer in memory of her husband Elias Shee, who died on 27 July 1613. The Latin inscription, rendered in false-relief Roman capitals across multiple panels on the frieze and within the canopy, identifies him as an esquire, "conspicuous for many gifts of nature and manifold ornaments of learning", and describes Margaret as a grieving wife, "charissima", who erected the monument to a most beloved husband. The Shees were one of the prominent merchant and legal families of early modern Kilkenny, and a monument of this ambition, in the Renaissance style then fashionable among the town's Catholic elite, would have been a visible declaration of status and learning as much as an act of private grief. The entablature was badly damaged by vandalism in the late 1990s, but the monument has since been carefully rebuilt, with the canopy arches also restored in the process.